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Does anyone know about Briarcliff Mews apartments. Its on Briarcliff Rd at St. Louis I believe. Is it a safe neighborhood? Is it a nice apartment building? How will the commute be to spaghetti junction?

Great area (I'm not familiar with that exact complex but the area in general). Close to lots of shopping and entertainment, very safe. One of the few places in Atlanta that is somewhat walkable (if you can get across Briarcliff), although there is no rail access. I'd say you are looking at 25 minutes to work, maybe 35 back.

The only problem here is a lot of the apartment buildings are getting torn down to build new ones so your residence might not be there long.

For the most part the commute is going the opposite direction from the bulk of the traffic, so that's a big plus. I don't know how long it'd take durung rush hour, but with no traffic I think it'd take 20 minutes at an absolute minimum (assuming you get ALL green lights). Probably 40 minutes is more realistic. There are zillions of traffic lights between Va-Hi and Spaghetti Junction.

I think your first opportunity to get on 85 would be to go left on N. Druid Hills (from Briarcliff) and jump on the highway. You might not want to deal with the highway, though, since a lot of people coming from all directions use Spaghetti Junction to get on 285 North to the Perimeter/Northside Hospital area.

The drive really wouldn't be that bad. The worst thing about it is Briarcliff is used to handle a lot of the traffic into Emory, so it can get crowded in spots. Another problem is in the Dekalb County is planning on upgrading several intersections along the stretch in the next few years so traffic could get worse. N. Druid Hills would be a bad place to get on the highway. A better (and easy place at that time of day) would be Clairmont. An easy shortcut onto the highway is to use Executive Park Drive (up to N. Druid Hills, to the highway) to cut out most travel on N. Druid Hills. The drive really doesn't have to be that bad, you just have to know the back roads to get around the traffic.

One good thing about Dekalb is that there are lots of different ways to get from point a to point b, and the freeway (for me, at least) is almost never the most direct route. A smart commuter will try them all, assuming there's always another way to go that might be faster, safer, better road quality, more scenic, or whatever. It took me a long time to find the best way to get to work. I must've tried 15 different ways before I found my current route.

I still think there is little to no time savings going to Clairmont rather than N. Druid (particularly since you reminded me of the Executive Park shortcut).

I would do Clairmont over Druid Hills (especially on the way back) but Executive Park Drive works really, really well.

I wouldn't normally suggest another route then Briarcliff (such as Scott Blvd or something), just certain short cuts along the route to bypass the bottlenecks. Houston Mill to LaVista would actually move really well in this direction during rush hour. I would highly recommend exploring routes through there as well. But I would suggest exploring all possible routes back there to see what works best.

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